Hexen - Being and Nothingness
When the press release that accompanies an album tells me to unlearn everything I know about Metal, I usually find that what the band really wants me to do is to assume that they are Metal in the first place. In this case, Hexen wants me to assume that they’re Thrash. This is actually Progressive Thrash, which is to say that it falls loosely into the Thrash category, but there is so much navel-gazing technicality that it fails to kick enough ass. It is possible to be technical and still kick plenty of ass. Peace Sells… by Megadeth, for example, was technical as hell and still gave me plenty of neck damage [That was a fast quarter-century! -Editor]. Hexen doesn’t do that. They get so caught up on the whole “We want people to know how well we can play our instruments” thing that they forget that good Thrash kicks ass. Great Thrash, like the legendary bands (Metallica, Exodus, Slayer, Megadeth, Destruction, Sodom, etc.), gives you life-altering beat-downs that you compare all other Thrash bands to. If I judge Hexen by that standard, they’re fourth-tier at best. They’re fighting with Epidemic, Wrekking Machine and The Organization for space in my collection. They’re not even up there with lower tier bands like Laaz Rockit or Defiance when it comes to kicking ass. Maybe that’s why they want me to unlearn what I know about Metal. If I judge them by “I’ve been listening to Thrash since the early ’80s and I live in San Francisco, the place that made Thrash famous” standards, of course they’re going to come up short.
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